Metro Journeys

For some reason many of my pictures this week were from various metro journeys I have had. I thought about why I was so interested in photographing the structures, the people, and the spaces in the metro. Again I think it is a way of documenting or mapping my experience of Paris.

So much of my time here in Paris is spent traveling on the metro. But why is this when Paris is so beautiful to look at? Why do I spend a lot of my time underground and not above appreciating all the shops, streets, and people of Paris? When we are shown in movies and pictures, picturesque moments of Paris the metro is hardly the subject. We are shown what I have described, the city above ground. I think I wanted to show that Paris is more than this, at least to me since I am spending so much time viewing Paris by hopping from point to point on a map, from station to station. Picturing these moments again helps me to realize that Paris is more than pretty; it is a bustling, moving city that is advancing technologically just like the rest of the world.

I am sad that I came upon this discovery, the discovery that I might be able to map my journeys of Paris by photographing various metro stations, so late. Had I discovered it earlier I would have worked on this idea more. It would have been very interesting to take pictures at every stop I went to in Paris. However, I am glad that I have found this week a reoccurring theme in my work. Most of the photos I have taken end up documenting some image of Paris that I feel might be overlooked for the more picturesque features of Paris. But as we have discussed often in class, it becomes boring to photograph only these picturesque monuments and they end up having less meaning since every tourist shop sells dozens of postcards with the Eiffel tower on them. So we have often asked what do we do now with Paris, what should we photograph when beautiful images of Paris have been circulating for so long and are constantly affecting our own work? I have found my project to be challenging this notion that there are certain picturesque images of Paris. My discovery that while this city is romantic it is still a not perfect place with everyday people living here has been a motivating factor for my work. The everyday Paris that I have come to live in has made me question why a thing is beautiful and has made me put a great deal more thought into the photography I produce here.

A subset of ground work

While I was working with images of the ground and pushing the idea of randomness I began to notice that these pictures were often not huge indicators of my presence in Paris. Ground and sky often begins to seem the same in different places, unless of course you have mastered the art of naming a place based on its groundscape or skyscape. I began also to think about why it interested me to take pictures of images that were not so referential to Paris but were evidence of my tracks, or my experience. Then I considered Benjamin’s discussion of the photographer being a type of criminal detective, taking pictures as clues. These were my clues to myself and to others of where I had gone and what I had looked at, even if it wasn’t immediately apparent where I was.

So I thought about other ways I might look at images in order to take them out of context a bit. I liked the idea that only I might know where this photo came from, because it was unique. It might be hard for someone else to find the place I took the picture at and perhaps this might make it more interesting.

I expanded this idea to include reflection. I hadn’t worked with reflection much the first few weeks, but many of my pictures ended up containing reflected images of some type this week. I think in reflections too there is a sense of a misplaced context. Not only are you viewing an image that is not the actual place, but now you are viewing a reflected image, in a photograph. The original object is twice taken out of context and now Susan Sontag’s words about Plato’s allegory of the cave suddenly became a lot clearer as a metaphor for me. What is real is misplaced, taken out of context and we are left only to wonder where we might be, what it might mean. I am interested in these kinds of photos, photos that make you think, photos that might make you view the world a little bit differently. I don’t know how successful my work this week was in doing this but I have tried to push further any concepts that have floated into my mind during the past few weeks.

Paris: Sometimes all I smell is garbage

Another idea I began to push in my work this week was my documentation of the so called “non-pretty” side of Paris, that is, the evidence of actual life with its waste and sometimes unclean look. I wanted to look again at places where garbage or waste might be, but I also wanted to push this idea. So I decided I would not limit my search for the unclean to just garbage, but expand it to allow for the many images and places I have come across that one might not expect of Paris.

As I have said before, I am not a fan of the idea that we should continue to image that Paris is not just a “picture perfect” place. Living in a place should definitely show one this. For me living in Europe, and in a city with such distinction as Paris, I have come to realize, as many do, that Paris is not the place of the Eiffel tower, or Notre Dame. It is a live, moving city with real people living real, non-movie-like lives. When I think of my home Chicago I am not only thinking of the Sears Tower or Navy Pier, so why is it that it takes someone so long to realize the fantasy around Paris that is built up by so many images of the past? Books, movies, and pictures, have all impressed upon our minds that Paris is “the city of love” and that it is beyond beautiful. I wanted to challenge the notions of what Paris really is in my work.

This is all of course not to say that Paris isn’t beautiful or “picturesque.” I love Paris, I love being here, and I still really enjoy seeing things like the Eiffel Tower, but I have also seen normal life here. I have come to love Paris despite seeing graffiti, dog poop, garbage, and other images that might be considered “not picturesque.” I believe that I can truly appreciate this city even more when I am able to look past the pretty Paris as it is supposed to be represented, and see the whole picture. So I have documented what I think people might think of as the uglier side of Paris. But to me these images are beautiful because they are a reminder that I am not falling head over heels for Paris without thinking. I am challenging Paris just as I would challenge Chicago, and this makes me feel even closer to my work and Paris itself. It is only by critiquing notions that we have that we are able to learn more, or else we would all just keep our stubborn ideas. I challenge myself and others to look at Paris in a new light with this weeks work.

Pushing my work

This week I decided to continue working with my idea of photographing the ground and photographing looking up. I liked the idea that I would be mapping my experience of the world in a different viewpoint. In this light I decided to push my idea of mapping my experience. I started to take only pictures of the ground and above but I added another element: Randomness.

In class we started a debate about the qualifications for photography as an art form. People raised points about the interference of the machine being something that might make photographic art less intentional than the art of a painting for example. Basically, the question of whether or not the photographer was an intentional artist came up through this discussion and the accusation that the photographer might not be a completely intentional artist did upset me in many ways.

I believe any kind of art form is always going to be subjected to criticism and manipulation of the original intentions when it is viewed by an audience. But art does have intentions and we have already seen that photography is an art form in our culture. Therefore, photography must too have some kind of intention by the artist, even if that intention or meaning behind the work changes when it is viewed by an audience. To deny that the artist does not have control over their photographic work is like saying I don't have control over my speech, or what I write here in my blog. In addition to choosing what my photographic project or image will be, I can always choose not to show an image as art at all. I think it is time to ask ourselves why we are asking the question about intentionality in photography, not whether or not photographers as artists have as much control in their work. We know that photography is held by our culture as an important art form, and photographers as important artists with intentions and therefore this becomes a question about why we as a culture feel the need to question the validity of photography as an art form. Surely this tell us something socially about ourselves.

I wanted to investigate this idea more. Why is it that one thinks every detail of art should be perfectly planned or else it might not be art? I am an improviser and interestingly enough, the performance art I perform is based on loose rules that rely on randomness to create the art of the improvisation itself. For instance, in a long-form improv show you are working with your fellow performers to create something that is based on random interactions between each other. There is no way for us to know every detail that will have occurred by the end, and that is what makes the end conclusion so beautiful. During the performance and in the ending, the audience is left to read the scenes as the wish, making connections that we as performers completely invite them to do, but in no way would have made those same connections. Yet this comedic performance art is accepted and the same type of randomness in photography is questioned. Why is this?

Of course comedic theater is different than photography, but it too is social as all art forms are. Is it just the safe realm of comedy that allows the randomness of this performance art to be so accepted? Perhaps it is that in our everyday lives there is already so much randomness that people feel art should be grounded in control of some type. But I argue that randomness in photography might be more interesting, as real life happens randomly. There is beauty in randomness to me and I wanted to explore this idea in my photos.

So for a large part of my photographs this week I walked around with my camera pointed either up or down and when I felt the urge to take a picture I pressed the button. I did it when I felt something, when I saw something coming up, even when I heard something interesting. I wanted to surprise myself with the images and I wanted to question the idea that this type of project would somehow be less intentional than my other work. I would argue actually, that I had a lot more intention in this work than that which I started with. I can't come up with as good of reasons as to why I took pictures of graveyards in sepia tones as to why I did this project. I feel this only makes the work stronger.

Garbage

Something particular to Paris, from my experience at least, is the stunningly bad smells and presence of garbage in a city that is often referred to as "picture perfect." That in itself is a loaded phrase but I won't go into that right now because I'd rather focus on garbage and smelly Paris.

There are times when I walk through this city and I can't believe the amount of dog urine and waste I see all over the place. There are stagnant pools of water and cardboard boxes covering them. There are smells so bad I have to hold my nose closed. I don' t remember Chicago smelling this much...or do I.

I started thinking about the places we live in and our expectations for them. I realized that maybe it is not that Paris is smellier and dirtier than Chicago, but that I might expect more cleanliness of Paris. When I go back to Chicago I am sure I would be able to take just as many pictures trying to indicate the smelly feeling of garbage I get there just like in Paris. It is just strange to me that it took being abroad, in this romanticized place to realize that I should be more aware of the details in my own home town. Apparently I am not the only person who overlooks their own town's ability to be photographed because Sontag quotes Berenice Abbott saying about the same thing. "If I had never left America, I would never have wanted to photograph New York. But when I saw it with fresh eyes, I knew it was my country, something I had to set down in photographs" (67-68). Maybe that will be a project when I get home.

In the meanwhile I tried to take a lot of pictures in places where I felt almost gross. I think living in a place is about experiencing it in its entirety and so I want to show not only the "picturesque" side of Paris, but the gross parts too.

Ground shots and sky shots

Even in the arcades I noticed I had taken a lot of ground shots and overhead shots. Then again this week a lot of my pictures had a similar theme. That got me thinking. A lot of the world we see horizontally. People look left and right a lot. So why is it that I lot of my pictures are up or down?

In acting you can often get into a character better if you do something called the string exercise. You envision what you believe your character would be led by if they had strings pulling them at certain parts of their bodies. For instance if I were stuck up, or wanting to play this, I might have one string lead me by the chest and another leading me by pulling my head and nose up. By physically changing your body you change your perception and it is easier to "be" that person.

I started to think about characters when I noticed that a lot of my pictures were up and down and realized that often I am walking with my head down or up. As a character then I
might be lead by a string pulling my head down and out. My perception of the world changes when I am looking at the ground and this in turn says something about me as the photographer.

I often like pictures of the ground because they give me a feeling of something having happened here. The texture of stones or grass can be weathered and show that time has passed here. But I realized when re-looking at de Certeau's writing that this feeling cannot actually be "captured" in the photograph. He writes, "Surveys of routes miss what was: the act itself of passing by...The trace left behind is substituted for the practice. It exhibits the (voracious) property that the geographical system has of being able to transform action into legibility, but in doing so it causes a way of being in the world to be forgotten" (97). My feeling of wanting to show something that happened in a certain place may in fact do that but it does not mean that this is a totally positive thing. In fact by de Certeau's standards it would probably be better if I were to perform the picture taking act itself as the art. I could be in my "character" who looks down at the ground because then I am showing not just the trace of events but the discovery of the progress I found in the weathered stone. This discovery is more important in my real life than necessarily in a picture and is much harder to forget, at least for myself. Perhaps this is why I like Performance art.

Playing with light

Once color became an important issue to me I started to deal with how color can transform light and vice versa. Natural sunlight, candle light, and electricity all have their own quality that I wanted to play with a bit. In theater design, I have learned that light is a very important instrument for evoking feeling from an audience. A combination of lights can provide visual stimulation that enhances the performance itself. So I had a feeling this might also be true for an image I would photograph.

But that makes me think, is my purpose to evoke feelings or thoughts from people with my pictures? We often discuss what art is and the discussion of making people think or feel is often associated with good art. I have always believed that if a piece becomes meaningful to someone by evoking feelings or thoughts than it is art.

But if I chose to distort reality by playing with light through my camera lens what does that mean about me socially or culturally? As I began to take pictures with light in mind I noticed that instead moved towards taking pictures that involved light but that seemed to be more about a scene I liked. Susan Sontag tells us that this might occur when she writes, "To take a picture is to have an interest in things as they are, in the status quo remaining unchanged...to be in complicity with whatever makes a subject interesting, worth photographing..." (12). Perhaps my reverting to scenes that I like is an indicator that I am indeed affected by all the imagery that has come before me and that subconsciously I want my images to be like them too. Maybe I secretly desire things staying the same, which would be another reason why I might have reinforced the nostalgia I've been feeling with my sepia toned pictures. I don't know why I felt that trees and clouds were worth photographing but in the moment I felt a calmness and a will to take that picture. Perhaps it is me being influenced by the collection of images in our culture or maybe I just wanted to show something that was interesting to me. Either way I ended up liking a lot of the shots that were supposed to be about light and ended up being about my perception of things.

Starting to work with color

This week I forced myself to work with color a bit because I had used so much sepia last week. After our discussion of whether this choice was problematizing or whether it was perpetuating nostalgia, I decided I wanted to force myself to get away from my own preference for non color photographs in order to discover whether this preference is caused by nostalgia or whether it is just an aesthetic preference.

As I began taking more pictures with color, I noticed myself beginning to look all around me for what I thought was a great color combination and great line to photograph. In a lot of ways this took me out of the moment of my day to day life and into a space of creativity. For me it was a lot like the experience I have when I am acting and I just let go of reality. It was very strange to me to think that I was somehow taking myself out of reality when we've had so many discussions in class about whether photography does or doesn't present reality. In those moments the act of photography, like that of acting, became my reality, whether it was the one everyone else was in or not.

And then I remembered some things that Susan Sontag had written about photography. She says, "But the notions of image and reality are complementary. When the notion of reality changes, so does that of the image, and vice versa. "Our era" does not prefer images to real things out of perversity but partly in response to the ways in which the notion of what is real has been progressively complicated and weakened" (160). When I start thinking about photography and photographs I often think about the perception of the photographer themselves. What makes each photograph interesting to me is that this person might have a different reality than me. I don' t know if there is one single objective reality, but when I take photographs sometimes I feel like my reality is a bit skewed.

I' m struggling to figure out why switching to color made me realize that I was being taken out of the moment and into my own separate little world. Perhaps it is because when there is no sense of nostalgia working on me then I can better see how time is being transformed in the act of my photographing. When I look back at the photos now I get a better sense of when these pictures might have been taken, which is why I question their reality. I see in color and so it is a bit easier for me to believe that these photographs point to a reality (mine that is) whereas my sepia toned ones point to an alteration of my reality. Perhaps I like non color photographs because I like to alter the perception of my reality.

A note on why digital and why technology for a project on Paris

When I first began this project I thought I might be shooting in film. Once I realized that the thing getting to me the most in my picture taking was the conflict between old and new, historical and imaginative, restoration and progress, I realized that I wanted to use a digital medium to further exploit the tension I was feeling. To shoot digital images in sepia or black and white tones of things that are from a place in history shows my perception of this conflict. I wanted to investigate how time and place feel different when they are shown in a digital medium on the Internet. Access is suddenly granted to all, and there is no actual material for my study of space, time, and perception. This makes the project seem even more like clues in a detective case for me since they begin to be archived inside the computer. They gain the chance to be seen by more people, but they lose the feeling of progress, at least in the material sense. I feel that way about a lot of the images that mesh together in Paris and I wanted to portray this in my work.

From Cafes to grave sites:looking at people and forms

With my new found need to observe people because of my experiences in the arcades also came a need to investigate form and space. I found myself doing this in cafes, museums, and even the cemetery. In addition to color tone of the pictures I was taking I wanted to investigate how my angle changed perception of an object or scene as well.

We talked in class a lot about how the photographer represents the world and if they are showing you the world "as it really is" But for me, it is not about whether I am showing the world better than you can see it, but rather that I am describing visually and unknowingly what has influenced me and my perception when I am somewhere. In this way I think photographing adds to "the collective unconscious" that Benjamin describes. The collection of all our different perceptions is perhaps why photographs could show the world as it really is. For me the world, reality, scenes are what each of us make of them and we could get closer to seeing the giant collage of the world if we saw the world from many people's different viewpoints.

So at the cafe, museum and grave sites I looked at forms and images that had an influence on me. Some of them were because they made me feel excited about the Paris atmosphere as in the case of the cafe and others because they made me feel very desolate, like in the cemetery. I wanted to manipulate space, to show what things made me pay extra attention to them. I wanted to show how it was that I stumbled upon Susan Sontag's grave without even knowing it when I read a quote on a grave and realized it was hers. I wanted to show how the people in the cemetery looked and I wanted to show how dark and odd it feels to take in images of other people's graves.

Two more arcades: Passage des Panoramas and Passage Jouffroy

We stepped out of the first arcade and realized the Passage des Panoramas was just across the street. It is so easy to get lost in the maze of Paris streets. We walked in and instantly I felt a change in space. People brought items out of their stores into the halls of the arcade and the place became a mix between a street market and a living room. Restaurants had "outdoor seating" that they decorated to look as if it might be in a dining room and people walked around it unfazed.

It was around now that I began to pay a lot of attention to the unknowing observer. I was fascinated by the looks of concentration people had on their faces while looking in the windows and in some cases photographing. I took pictures of these people trying to observe them as Benjamin says a flâneur might, paying attention to people in the crowd. Some times people looked right at my camera but had no idea just exactly what I was seeing. Just as I was photographing observers and my friends who were themselves taking pictures without them realizing it, it is exciting that in the end I myself could be being watched in just the same way.

In this arcade more than any of the others I felt a great tension between new and old objects. I was again paying attention to the small details in the floor and the wall but it was in contrast to the posters of films anciens depicting Audrey Hepburn and other classics. These were two different types of history meshing together. Then there was the completely modern like visa stickers on every store that reminded me that we are far gone from a time where pocket change was the only thing you could pay with. Graffiti splattered old wood and people walked around accepting all of this without skipping a beat.

My favorite discovery: A small piece of wall outside a store that had been painted over to look more like brand new marble. It was one of the clearest markers to me that people wished for a look of the olden days without the presence of progress that scuffs and marks can show.

The first arcade: Galerie des Varietes

The first arcade I went to was an unknown one, and actually across the street from the Passage des Panoramas, the arcade we first meant to go to. It was lucky however that we found this smaller one because it wasn't as busy as the following two we would go to.

I found myself immediately struck with the awe of a historical architecture. The base of the walls and their details fascinated me. They showed aging of the stones and wood. Something had happened here. What was so intriguing to me is that I could make up my own history of the place I was in based on the small details of the floor and architecture. This feeling would accompany me throughout my picture taking process in the arcades. As Benjamin says, "Performed in the figure of the flâneur is that of the detective" (The Arcades Project 442). Looks like I am guilty of flânerie once again.

It was because of this nostalgia that I was also drawn to shoot my photographs in sepia and black and white tone along with color. I was very interested in how much the story of the arcades changed when the colors were transformed. Looking at the sepia toned photos, time is misplaced much more than with the color. It also shows my nostalgia for the past. Yet I still have a longing for the technology of color readily available to me. Shooting in both reminded me not to get caught up in just the nostalgia. And I was hardly able to completely forget about the present when I began to notice that this arcade, like the next two to come, was filled with modern objects (like this plastic chair to the right) that made my mind sway back and forth between the past and the present.

A Day at the Park

One of my favorite things to do is sit in the parks of Paris. For some reason they seems much more serene, beautiful, and calming than those of Chicago. And most importantly I can people watch when I am there.

I went on my first serious photo shoot to the park across from where I live. In this park I feel as if every Parisian who is there owns the place. Like this couple for instance who made me feel as if I were bursting into their living room unannounced:

It is as Benjamin talks about, like the park becomes their very own room. People lay comfortably or stretch for a good run and no one seems out of place, except me, with my camera.

A group of boys go by when I am shooting a shot of people lying on the grass and they call out in French I don't understand and then in English, "What art are you making?" in a very mocking tone. It makes me think, what art am I making? What is so fascinating about people lying in grass besides it looking "good" or "pretty" to me? And then I feel that sense of calmness again, the calmness that comes with sitting in this park and reading, or running as I often do. It is the serene, calm, beauty of nature that I enjoy in the midst of a historical city. The best of two worlds, modernity and nature. This is the feeling I unknowingly started to portray in my photos.

I can see this park from my window in my room and I walk past it every day. It has become so much of my routine that sometimes, even after only having been here for a month I forget to investigate why I love it so much. Looking back at photos my notions of the park as a comfort spot is only enhanced. The materiality of the photograph does affect my ideology and perception of the space itself. It makes me think that Benjamin was right when he said, "We know that, in the course of flânerie, far off times and places interpenetrate the landscape and the present moment" (The Arcades Project 419). More and more I begin to see myself as a flâneur.

Starting a blog

Starting a blog has always been a weird idea to me. It is this personal space that becomes completely public. What made me want to do it? A photography class in which we must take pictures and share our thoughts/critical analysis on them. The photograph to me is like that of a blog: It is something from inside yourself that you wish to bring out to others. The world's view from your eyes. You choose just like a blog how public or private the images are, even if you are doing it unknowingly.

So I thought why not start my own blog. Recently the idea has grown on me. It is a journal for an audience. Some of this blog will of course contain my photography project and it's analysis-which is a bit different than your everyday journal.

Technology is enabling us to share more and more-it's really interesting to me that in some ways I love this idea and in others I yearn for the simple ideas of the past.